Dead Cells

Hope you're doing well! On our side, we just made the new update available on the Beta branch. The full patch notes are available here[dead-cells.com] as usual, but here is a quick rundown:

Brutality get 2 new mutations

Brutality and melee builds clearly needed new ways to sustain through the game to make risky playstyles more rewarding and viable, so we added two red mutations, Frenzy and Adrenalin to help with that.

The Arbiter is dead... (BC3+)

As a transversal mob inhabiting a majority of biome in Boss Cells 3+, the Arbiter had the unwanted effect of transforming Dead Cells in a bullet hell(ish) kind of game, heavily punishing non-shield builds and terribly slowing the pace of a run.

Hence the decision to put him uniquely in the Cavern level where fighting him in the often wide and open combat rooms can feel less of an hassle. We also make it so the Arbiter will only attack horizontally.

I know some of you were just getting used to it and even beginning to like the guy, but hey, let's be honest here and admit that it had probably more to do with Stockholm's syndrome than anything else.

...Long Live the Rampager (BC3+)

With the Arbiter's... err... re-localization, we had to find an alternative mob to provide a new challenge to players. We tried replacing the Arbiter with various already existing mobs, but, in the end, nothing felt really convincing. So we went back to the drawing board and basically made an enraged, steroids-powered zombie.

All it wants is a good ol' hug. Probably.

Thunder Shield Rework

It's previous mechanic was definitely underwhelming, so we tweaked it. Now, parry once and you become a walking Tesla coil. Use your shield again to create a electric wave around you, dealing damage and stunning the enemies.

Elites Rework

With the addition of the random abilities, the minions weren't necessary anymore, and were adding a lot of visual noise, so we decided to get rid of it. The pushback effect also got deleted, as it lead to some cheap damage being dealt. We've also begun to prevent some mob/ skill combinations that were feeling really random and unfair.

All of these also come with the usual batch of bug fixes and balance tweaks, and a few Quality of Life improvements. So, please jump in the beta branch and tell us how you feel about the latest additions. Full list available here[dead-cells.com].

Moving on to a few additional notes. For the console players around getting their Dead Cells news here, the DLC will be available on Switch and Playstation today. Apologies for the Xbox owners... a nasty bug is still playing cats and dogs with us. We will bring you the DLC as soon as we can. The 1.3 will be sent to certification when we're satisfied with the community feedback here.

Last but not least, we've now passed the 2 Millions copies of Dead cells sold threshold! Thanks to all of you for the continuous support and for talking your friends into giving Dead Cells a chance!

We've just pushed a little bug fix update live on the alpha branch for those who are willing to test out the horrors we've prepared for you.

What's new?

I'm not telling you here, cos this is the Alpha update. So y'all can wait for a big detailed news when it hits the main branch. However, if my most excellent MS paint comic sans title image wasn't enough for you...

WE NERFED THE ARBITER! In fact we banished the beast from BC3 entirely, except for his natural cavern-esque habitat.

Yeah well, I didn't sleep well last night, so this is what happens. Half assed steam newsing, snoozing, snooooooozing.

Nah, actually this is us getting back on the horse! From now on we'll be MUCH more on the case with updates. We've heard you about the problems with the RotG DLC, some of the things will be fixed in the update 13 Alpha/Beta cycle, some will not (getting the collector into the base game... Not likely to happen... For now...)

Switch bloody Switch....

It's coming. In fact it's almost here. We're through lotcheck, just waiting for a few things to finalise on the DLC setup front before we get it up for everyone, but if there are no more problems, potentially next week or the week after.... Or excuses excuses.

Same goes for PS4 and XB1.

Anywho, stay tuned for more news and acerbic commentary, at least until Jo gets back and reclaims his rightful role as "chief news writing poobah"*.

How do I get in?

To access the ALPHA follow these instructions:Go to your Steam game library.Right click on Dead Cells and click "properties".Select the tab "Betas".In the first dropdown box select "Alpha - Not for the faint hearted".Click close and wait for the upload to finish downloading.Start playing.

WARNING: In this version of the game you will lose your save every time we push an update, which could be pretty often! This will not impact your old save files. You will be able to import the old ones in to this version, but not export them. This way you can play with everything you've already unlocked, without fear of frying your saves.

If you are still worried about losing you save then feel free to head over here: "steam\userdata\<ID>\588650\remote" and copy the files somewhere safe.

There is a special slot only for saves from this version that will appear. It's pretty self explanatory, but feel free to ask questions. :)

It's here, it's crawled out of the alpha dungeon, made it though the beta gauntlet and now it's here for you all to play, Rise of the Giant, our first free DLC has fiiiinally made it to you after a slightly longer than planned gestation period.

A brand new level for those who have finished the game at least once (remember we lowered the base difficulty significantly in update 11). This is a kind of cavern, a deep dark hole filled with traps and other nasty surprises.

A new Boss! Guess what it is... Go on, guess! If you said "it's the giant" then you're wrong! It's Kratos!!!!!!! We teamed up with Sony Santa Monica to bring everyb.... Nah it's the Giant. And guess where he's hidden!!! Go on, guess!

The next big thing we've got for yo is the Custom Mode that many have been clamouring for, is now available WITHOUT requiring you to beat the game. If that's not quite what you wanted, keep complaining, we're a little slow on the uptake, but we do listen, even it we're maybe a little deaf in the right ear...

A shiny new SKINNING SYSTEM, that's right, skin the creatures you find and wear them like it was Silence of the Lambs up in here! All for the very reasonable price of $19.99 per loot box where you've got 99% chance of getting absolutely nothing!!! Oh wait, what!? You just play the game and unlock them for free? BUT WHAT ABOUT OUR SHARE PRICE!?

Ok enough college sarcasm, next up we have 10 new enemies! Some of them will obviously be waiting for you in the new levels, though many of them have been spread out through the NG+ difficulty levels. They're waiting for you to roll up thinking you own the game...

3 new skills, including a flying pet thing with extra cuteness and 10 new weapons including the completely original Boi Axe! Now with extra BOI!

The Hunters Grenade door has been replacecd by the Spcicalist's Shop. Essentially a few knick knacks for those advanced players who know what's up, and some pweeeety skins for the rest of us.

Oh and there may be another bunch of hidden stuff yadi yadi yada floating around in the game. No biggy.

Alright that's it, i'm done. You can check out the rest of the gazillion changes you've helped us make over here in the patch notes[dead-cells.com].

Thank you!

I really cannot stress enough how important your continued feedback, contribution and support, each and every one of you, has been to bringing Dead Cells to where it is today.

We said that we were going to do this free DLC quite a while ago, something of a thank you present to the community, and we meant it. So thank you all! Ok enough mushiness and tears, this is NOT goodbye.

Roadmap(kind-lookin-thing):

Here's a little of what we're planning at the moment and where we're heading:

Right now we're working on building out the team a bit more, we'll have news on how that's coming along and how we're planning on doing things as we move forward soon.

We are however building some new monsters, some little guys that may or may not have leaked a little bit already *cough cough over here cough cough*

We're going to keep adding content to the game for as long as it makes sense to do so, that's to say, for as long as enough people keep buying and playing the game to support the development costs and make us some more money for our next game.

There WILL be a next game... If you didn't see the Redbull documentary that they did on us, check it out, because you'll learn that we're really just all about games, and we'll be doing it until the arthritis kicks in and we physically can't.

Before you ask...... NO, I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THE NEXT GAME WILL BE. We are going to go through a really fun period of building demos, iterating and arguing over why roguelites are so yesterday and therefore we should definitely do another. We'll keep you posted as soon as we have things to share, and maybe even before we should.

Super top secret non-existant co-op royal battle of the bush mode, with machine gun, and frying pan.

We'd like to try and figure out if we can build some insane modes for Dead Cells, we don't know how yet, but we're imagining a sort of Skunk-works team secluding themselves in a bubble for months on end without showering, with the aim of emerging with something incredible! That or a whole bunch of take-out boxes and a smell to put the Guillain's pile of rotting corpses to shame.

We've always tried to be open and honest and the success of Dead Cells will not change that one bit, so stay tuned.

Oh and since you all asked once or twice... a minute. The console releases will follow ASAP, I'd say around the end of the month early May, though as it's not 100% up to us (thank you certification period) we'll just do our best and officially say "soon". Also next time I'll jsut include this kind of useful information from the get go...

To finish up with this public safety announcement, here's some more community artwork:

We hope you're all doing well. On our side, the DLC is going live tomorrow and we made a second animated trailer to celebrate! Really hope you will like it, and for the ones testing the new content on the beta branch, some parts should feel a bit familiar.

Our first free DLC is going to be coming to the main branch on the 28th of March! The Rise of the Giant DLC is the fulfilment of a promise that we made during our early access to continue to support the game and to continue to provide content for as long as you guys are interested in playing it.

I'm not going to say a terrible lot more about what's in the game, so as not to spoil it too much for anyone who's waiting for it to hit the main branch, but suffice to say that there's new levels, new bosses and a whole bunch more!

In the meantime for the curious, you can checkout the patch notes here[dead-cells.com], or test it yourself in the beta branch of the base game.

We're also super stoked to present to you a little accolade trailer that a friend of our made for us. It's been an incredible ride since way back in May 2017 when we first showed off another rogue-lite, pixel art, souls-wannabee to you all and since then we've continued to work to make the game bigger and better. The trailer shows off a few of the high points so far.